


Choose the Left

by kinestheticpariah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Gen, Mormonism, Mormonstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinestheticpariah/pseuds/kinestheticpariah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is a boy. Dave is also a boy. Can I make it any more obvious?<br/>Dave is a punk. John goes to Church. What the fuck rhymes with church?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose the Left

Texas is warmer than Utah, John Egbert thinks.

A lot warmer.

Sure, it can get pretty hot in the summer, but it turns out his cousin Jane wasn’t joking when she said Texas was an oven. He's been out of the car for less than a minute and he feel sweat soaking into the sides of his shirt under his arms already. The cool breeze that hits his face when Jade opens the door to the convenience store is a relief. He feels like he's going to bake to death in this heat.

He guesses it could be worse, and he could be in Arizona.

Once they enter the store, Dad calls a brief family council. The three stand a foot or so away from the entrance so as not to block anyone coming or going.

“Okay,” says Mr. Egbert. He fishes through his wallet and hands John and Jade five dollar bill each. “If you get candy, get something healthy like pretzels, too, to even it out. Or carrot sticks! Carrot sticks are great! Rabbits like carrot sticks. Rabbits are good and nice and don’t hurt people-”

“Dad...”

He looks up at John, and clears his throat. “Right,” he says. “Don’t go too crazy. I won’t pay for you if you go over your five-dollar mark. And Jade...”

Jade’s eyes widen behind her glasses. “What?” She looks at John, and then back at their dad.

“No more Mountain Dew,” he says, and Jade giggles. “I’m serious; caffeine isn’t good for you.” He gives her a stern look, and pats John on the back. Jade looks down at her shoes, flushing slightly. John imagines she's pretty embarrassed, and for a second considers reminding Dad that Jade is thirteen and not three. “Be in the car in five minutes. We’re almost to San Antonio.” He heads to the back, grabs a cream soda, and walks back to the checkout.

 

“I have an idea,” says Jade while the two are walking along an aisle full of candy bars.

“What is it?” John asks, a bit uneasy. He hopes it’s not something weird and science-y like putting Mentos into Coke like they did this morning at the rest stop in Snyder. Their dad hadn't been very happy with that, and they had all had to change clothes. They're lucky Jade had the sense to conduct the experiment outside.

“We’ll both buy our sodas,” she replies, “and then one of us will buy some candy, the other will buy a ‘healthy snack’-” she makes quotation marks with her fingers as she speaks, “and we’ll share!”

He shrugs. “Sounds good to me, I guess,” he says. “I guess you’ll be taking care of the candy?”

“Always!” She grins and disappears to the next aisle in a hurry.

John continues to the back and grabs some Strawberry Fanta, but then he sees Sprite, and he debates it in his head for a few seconds. On one hand, Strawberry Fanta is really great. On the other hand, Sprite is lighter. He winds up settling for Sprite, because sometimes if he drinks too much Fanta his stomach feels gross, and he really doesn't want to be feeling sick when he's helping Dad move things into the new house.

He grabs a bag of barbecue chips and a bag of Hot Cheetos from the shelves before heading to the checkout. When he passes Jade, he hears her giggling and squeaking over the array of candy. He silently prays she doesn't get carried away.

He ends up in line behind a few people, so he relaxes for a few minutes. His phone vibrates, and he knows it’s Jane before he even pulls it out of his pocket to look.

 

 

  


Jane is John's cousin. She’s seventeen, a senior in high school, and she really likes to bake. John likes to joke that she should have been named Betty, because then her name would be Betty Crocker. Her dad is his dad’s little brother. He isn’t really as active in the Church as Mr. Egbert is, but they get along okay if they don’t talk about religion. Even though she wasn’t raised to be active in the Church, she really just comes and goes, she’s really nice and isn’t bad like John's dad says most inactive members are. Maybe it’s because his uncle is nice? He’s pretty nice, John thinks, and isn’t really one of those people who spreads rumors about the Church or tries to make people not join. John thinks he reads the Bible sometimes, and might go to church at some other place.

He shoots Jane a quick reply before approaching the counter with his soda and chips.

 

 

 

 

The lady at the counter is grumpy and old. She mumbles all her words and sort of just grabs the dollar bill from John before shoving the change and receipt into his hand, then exclaiming: "Next!"

John guesses he underestimated his total - he winds up with only ten cents in change - but at least he didn’t spend the whole five.

 

When the two get back to the van, Mr. Egbert is wiping down the windshield with a squeegee. Jade shows John her spoils as they climb into the backseat: a bottle of generic orange soda (99 cents), a pack of sour gummy worms (one dollar), and two packs of Starburst ($1.25; they were buy one get one free). Her change is $1.30, and they're both surprised that she spent less than John at a gas station convenience store for once. Jade unwraps an orange Starburst and pops it into her mouth; John opts for a gummy worm and washes it down with a few gulps of Sprite. He realizes he's thirstier than he thought when the soda level in the bottle comes back about two inches lower than it had been full.

John's phone vibrates in his pocket and he checks to look.

 

 

 

 

The promise of cupcakes is exciting. Baked goods are always great, especially when Jane makes them. John replies with a quick “okay!” before settling into his seat to finish watching _The Best Two Years_ on Dad’s iPad. John think it's the best movie ever, but his dad says it's sort of blasphemous. John doesn't really get how it can be blasphemous if it's a movie about Mormons made by actual Mormons, but Dad says it's at least clean and up to church standards for the most part, and better than a lot of "today's trash", so John is off the hook for this one.

Dad gets back into the car after a few minutes, and, after belting himself in, holds out his hand to John and Jade. They both hand their change to him: a dollar bill, a quarter, a dime, and a nickel.

"Too bad you don't have a penny," says Jade. "Then you'd have all of the coins!"

"What about half dollars?" John says. Jade narrows her eyes and sticks her tongue out at him. John holds his hands up in defeat before turning back to the movie.

 

It’s 5:30 PM when they arrive in the new neighborhood.

The moving truck is there, and so is Uncle James. His car is parked in the driveway, and he’s holding the door open for a few guys who are taking a big IKEA box into the house. Before the family had left Utah, Dad had John and Jade sell a lot of their old furniture and then took them to the IKEA in Draper to buy new beds and dressers and whatnot. “Fresh start,” he had said. And they couldn't really argue with new bedroom sets, they guessed.

Mr. Egbert parks on the curb, so the moving guys will have a place to walk. Jade hops right out of the car and runs to the moving truck to help.

“Jade,” Dad calls, stepping out of the car. She turns. “John and I can do that.”

She frowns, deflates a bit, then turns her attention to Uncle James. “UNCLE JAAAAAAMES I missed you!” she exclaims, running towards him.

When she reaches the porch, he hugs her and lifts her off the ground for a moment. She giggles and shrieks in delight. “I missed you too, Jade." He steps back for a moment and tilts his head. "Are you a foot taller than you were three years ago?"

" _Maaaaybe_ ," says Jade, grinning.

 

“John, come help me with these boxes,” says Mr. Egbert. John sends a quick text to Jane telling her they've arrived, then gets out of the car and joins his father by the moving truck.

Mr. Egbert hands John a heavy box labeled “Church History Books”, sealed at the top with bright blue duct tape. "Your uncle will show you where it goes," he says, even though John already knows the contents are going to wind up proudly displayed on a bookshelf in the family room.

The house is pretty nice. When he walks in, there’s a linen closet and what he thinks is a half bathroom to his right. Then there’s the dining room, with glass-paneled double doors, and the stairs on his left. The kitchen and living room are sort of open into each other. There are IKEA packages and moving boxes all over the place, but they’re placed neatly. John sets the box of books next to a stack of HEMNES packages he's assuming will become the media center.

Before he's even gotten to his feet, he's ambushed.

“JOHN! I can’t believe it! Oh my goodness!”

Suddenly Jane is holding him and swaying back and forth and making little excited noises. She holds him at arms-length by his shoulders for a few seconds and then quickly pulls him back for another hug. She smells like vanilla.

“Hey, Jane,” John says, laughing a bit. "Wow, I JUST sent you that text and you're already here!"

"Oh, I was already here! I just had dad pick me up and bring me," she says. "Your dad called when you were coming into town."

He nods. "Well, that's cool," he says.

She giggles, putting her hand to cover her mouth the way she always does when she laughs. Her mannerisms and clothes make her seem like a fancy, classy lady from the 50's or something. She’s wearing a blue dress that goes down to her knees, and it looks nice against her tanned skin. It’s accented by a string of pearls around her neck. Her red spectacles have little rhinestones in the top corners, and her wavy black hair is, as always, cropped short.

John can't resist it.

“You look like Betty Crocker,” he says.

She smirks and playfully swats at his arm. “Stop it, silly! Hasn’t that joke gotten old yet?”

He shakes his head no, and she sighs. After a moment she takes his arm and studies it.

“You might still have time to get a nice tan,” she says, running a manicured finger along his forearm. “It doesn't get cool here until October, usually. You don’t get enough sun in Utah, do you? You’re very white.”

“Why do you always tease me for being pale!” he wails in annoyance. "I'm not even that much ligher than you!" She quirks an eyebrow. “Okay, so you’re a few shades darker than me.”

 

She smiles, closed-lipped as always, shakes her head, releases his arm, and daintily skips over to the counter, where there’s a huge cupcake carrier that John is pretty sure hadn't been there when he walked in. She opens it and pulls out a yellow cupcake frosted with royal blue icing. “I made this one just for you!” she says, holding it out to him. “I know blue is your favorite color.”

“Wow, thanks-”

“JAAAAAAAAAANE YOU’RE HEEEEEEEEEERE!”

When Jade is excited, her voice gets high. Really high. Like those opera ladies who shatter glass with their singing.

John winces.

“Oh! Golly, it’s a good thing I put those cupcakes down!” says Jane, returning the hug Jade is giving her with a few degrees less enthusiasm (no one is capable of Jade’s enthusiasm level except for Jade). “I’m glad to see you too!”

Jade hops back and takes Jane’s hands in hers. “Wow this is going to be GREAT! We can do Personal Progress together, and we’ll be in school together, and it’ll be like having a sister, except you’re my cousin!” She jumps up and down a bit as she speaks.

“I don’t really do Church things often,” says Jane, looking apologetic. “I haven’t touched my Personal Progress book since I was thirteen.”

“You can just do the fun things with me if you want!” Jade reassures her. “Like, um...Oh! You could teach me how to make those nice cheesecake brownies and that could count for Knowledge experience number two...”

John returns to the front to help bring more boxes in and leaves the two to their girly ramblings.

**Author's Note:**

> Reference post for this chapter: [here](http://professorzachary.tumblr.com/post/46885848573/choose-the-left-1st-chapter-references)


End file.
